DOJ OPINION NO. 059, s. 2004
June 17, 2004

Mr. Jose Mari B. Ponce
OIC-DAR Secretary and Chairman
PARC Executive Committee
Presidential Agrarian Reform Council
DAR Bldg., Elliptical Road
Diliman, Quezon City

Sir :

        This has reference to your request for opinion on the proposal to waive the collection of registration fees being charged by the Land Registration Authority-Registry of Deeds (LRA-RoD) on Free Patents (FP) being issued by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) which are still unclaimed/unregistered as of December 31, 2001.  IEAHca

        You state that the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) Executive Committee, upon the proposal of the Audit Management and Investigating Committee (AMIC), approved Resolution No. 02-90-02, Series of 2002, directing the DENR and LRA-RoD to waive the collection of registration fees; and that this action was the result of the audit finding that many farmer-beneficiaries (FBs) of public agricultural lands awarded by DENR under CARP have not claimed their FPs titles from the Register of Deeds for they cannot afford to pay the registration fees required by the DENR.

        You also state that a Special Committee, composed of representatives from DAR, DENR and LRA concluded that Section 66, Exemptions from Taxes and Fees of Land Transfers and Section 67, Free Registration of Patents and Titles, of R.A. No. 6657 "An Act Instituting A Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program To Promote Social Justice And Industrialization, Providing The Mechanism For Its Implementation, And For Other Purposes", explicitly provide the exemption from the payment of registration fee; and that the consensus was that R.A. No. 6657, being a later law superseded P.D. 1529 "Amending And Codifying The Laws Relative To Registration Of Property And For Other Purposes" with respect to Sections 103 and 111, which require payment of such registration fees.

        Finally, you state that the LRA submitted to the PARC Secretariat the Implementing Guidelines (IG) on Exemption from Payment of Fees in the Registration of Patents, Unclaimed/Undelivered as of December 31, 2001 dated July 18, 2003 but that the DENR, however, commented that the guidelines issued by the LRA do not conform with (sic) the intent of R.A. No. 6657.

        The request, it appears, arose when the LRA issued its implementing guidelines stating, among other things, that the said patents shall be exempt from payment of registration fees provided that these patents are required for the implementation of CARP.

        fter due consideration of the premises and a thorough study of the DENR's and LRA's positions, we are of the view that only those transactions falling under R.A. 6657 are exempt from the payment of registration fees.

        Certain provisions of R.A. No. 6657 and Executive Order No. 229 "Providing Mechanisms for the Implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program" come into play:

        R.A. No. 6657

"Sec. 2.         Declaration of Principles and Policies. — It is the policy of the State to pursue a comprehensive Agrarian Reform (CARP). The welfare of the landless farmers and farmworkers will receive the highest consideration to promote social justice and to move the nation toward sound rural development and industrialization, and the establishment of owner cultivatorship of economic-size farms as the basis of Philippine agriculture.

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The State shall apply the principles of agrarian reform, or stewardship, whenever applicable, in accordance with law, in the disposition or utilization of other natural resources, including lands of the public domain, under lease or concession, suitable for agriculture, subject to prior rights, homestead rights of small settlers and the rights of indigenous communities to their ancestral lands."

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"Sec. 3.         Definitions.

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(b)     Agriculture, Agricultural Enterprise or Agricultural Activity means the cultivation of the soil, planting of crops, growing of fruit trees, raising of livestock, poultry or fish, including the harvesting of such farm products, and other farm activities and practices performed by a farmer in conjunction with such farming operations done by person whether natural or juridical.

(c)     Agricultural land refers to land devoted to agricultural activity as defined in this Act not classified as mineral, forest, residential, commercial or industrial land."

"Sec. 4.         Scope. — The comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988 shall cover, regardless of tenurial arrangement and commodity produced, all public and private agricultural lands, as provided in Proclamation No. 131 and Executive Order No. 229, including other lands of the public domain suitable for agriculture.

More specifically the following lands are covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program:

(a)     All alienable and disposable lands of the public domain devoted to or suitable for agriculture . . .

(b)     All lands of the public domain in excess of the specific limits as determined by Congress . . .

(c)     All other lands owned by the Government devoted to or suitable for agriculture; and

(d)     All private lands devoted to or suitable for agriculture . . ."

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"Sec. 7.         Priorities. — . . . Lands shall be acquired and distributed as follows:

Phase One: . . .; and all other lands owned by the government devoted to or suitable for agriculture, which shall be acquired and distributed immediately upon the effectivity of this Act, . . .;

Phase Two: All alienable and disposable public agricultural lands; all arable public agricultural lands under agro-forest, pasture and agricultural leases already cultivated and planted to crops in accordance with Section 6. Article XII of the Constitution; all public agricultural lands which are to be opened for new development and resettlement; and all private agricultural lands in excess of fifty (50) hectares, . . ."

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"Sec. 66.       Exemptions from Taxes and Fees of Land Transfers. — Transactions under this Act involving a transfer of ownership, whether from natural or juridical persons, shall be exempted from taxes arising from capital gains. These transactions shall also be exempted from the payment of registration fees, and all other taxes and fees for the conveyance or transfer thereof ; Provided, That all arrearages in real property taxes, without penalty or interest, shall be deductible from the compensation to which the owner may be entitled."

"Sec. 67.       Free Registration of Patents and Titles. — All Register of Deeds are hereby directed to register, free from payment of all fees and other charges, patents, titles and documents required for the implementation of the CARP."

E.O. No. 229

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"SEC. 15.      Distribution and Utilization of Public Lands. — All alienable and disposable lands of the public domain suitable for agriculture and outside proclaimed settlements shall be distributed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to qualified beneficiaries as certified jointly by the DAR and DENR."

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"SEC. 18.      The Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) . . .

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. . . Such program of implementation shall take into account . . ., and the following basic policies and guidelines set forth in the Constitution:  CADSHI

a.      The CARP is founded on the right of farmers and regular farmworkers, who are landless, to own directly or collectively, the lands they till or, in the case of farmworkers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof;

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e.      In lands of the public domain, the CARP shall respect prior rights, homestead rights of small settlers, and the rights of indigenous communities to their ancestral lands;"

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"SEC. 28.      Free Registration of Patents and Titles. — All Registers of Deeds are hereby directed to register free from payment of all fees, patents, titles, and documents required in the implementation of the CARP." (emphasis ours)

        It is thus clear from the afore-quoted provisions of law that the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform (CAR) Law covers all public and private agricultural lands which include other lands of the public domain suitable for agriculture. Emphasis should be given to the phrase "devoted to or suitable for agriculture" in describing the type of lands, whether private or public lands in order that it may fall under the operation of the CARP. Such phrase is used to describe the public lands that are to fall within the coverage of CARP as opposed to the public lands that are the subject of Commonwealth Act No. 141 ("An Act To Amend And Compile The Laws Relative To Lands Of The Public Domain"), as amended, which is the law to be followed in the issuance of Homestead and Free Patents with respect to agricultural land of the public domain.

        The Public Land Act (C.A. No. 141, as amended) governs only such lands of the public domain as are not timber or mineral lands. The term "public lands", as used in the Public Land Act refers only to what was used to be known as public agricultural lands or what are otherwise known as alienable or disposable lands of the public domain.  1 

        Indeed, Sections 66 and 67 of R.A. No. 6657 clearly provide that only those transactions under this Act are exempted from the payment of registration fees and that the Register of Deeds are to register free from payment of all fees and other charges, patents, titles and documents required for the implementation of the CARP. Nowhere does it state that it also covers homestead and free patents issued by the DENR under C.A. No. 141.

        On the other hand, Section 103 of Presidential Decree No. 1529 ("Amending And Codifying the Laws Relative To Registration Of Property And For Other Purposes") provides that: "Whenever public land is by the Government alienated, granted, or conveyed to any person, the same shall be brought forthwith under the operation of this Decree . . .  The fees for registration shall be paid by the grantee . . ."

        The elementary rule in statutory construction is that when the words and phrases of a statute are clear and unequivocal, their meaning must be determined from the language employed and the statute must be taken to mean exactly what it says. Hence, what is not clearly provided in the law cannot be extended to those matters outside its scope. 2  Courts may not indulge in expansive construction and write into the law an exemption not therein set forth. Where a statute has granted in express terms certain exemptions, those are the only exemptions to be considered. 3

        The mode for distribution of public agricultural lands that falls within the coverage of CARP is found in Section 15 of E.O. No. 229, which is suppletory in application to R.A. No. 6657, which states that "all alienable and disposable lands of the public domain suitable for agriculture and outside proclaimed settlements shall be distributed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to qualified beneficiaries as certified to jointly by the DAR and DENR." (emphasis ours). Thus, these are the transactions which are in furtherance of the implementation of CARP and hence exempt from the payment of registration fees.

        Moreover, the determination of who are the farmer-beneficiaries under CARP is different from the Public Land Act. While the latter law specifically provides the necessary qualifications of a beneficiary to be entitled to the issuance of a homestead or free patent 4  under the CARP Law, it is the PARC that shall promulgate the necessary guidelines to determine who will be the farmer-beneficiaries. 5

        Please be guided accordingly.

Very truly yours,

(SGD.) MA. MERCEDITAS N. GUTIERREZ

Acting Secretary

Footnotes

  1.       Registration of land Titles and Deeds, Peña, Peña, Jr., p. 460, 1994 ed.;

  2.       Baranda v. Gustilo, 165 SCRA 757; Dayrit v. Cruz, 165 SCRA 571.

  3.       Esso Standard Eastern, Inc. v. Acting Commissioner of Customs, G.R. No. 21841, Oct. 28, 1966, 18 SCRA 488.

  4.       C.A. No. 141, as amended by R.A. No. 6940.

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                     "SEC. 12.         Any citizen of the Philippines over the age of eighteen years, or the head of a family, who does not own more than twenty-four hectares of land in the Philippines or has not had the benefit of any gratuitous allotment of more than twenty-four hectares of land since the occupation of the Philippines by the United States, may enter a homestead of not exceeding twenty-four hectares of agricultural land of the public domain."

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                     "SEC. 44.         Any natural-born citizen of the Philippines who is not the owner of more than twelve (12) hectares and who, for at least thirty (30) years prior to the effectivity of this amendatory Act, has continuously occupied and cultivated, either by himself or through his predecessors-in-interest a tract or tracts of agricultural public lands subject to disposition, who shall have paid the real estate tax thereon while the same has not been occupied by any person shall be entitled, under the provisions of this Chapter, to have a free patent issued to him for such tract or tracts of land not to exceed twelve (12) hectares."

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  5.       R.A. No. 6657

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                     "Sec. 7.            . . .

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                     The PARC shall establish guidelines to implement the above-priorities and distribution scheme, including the determination of who are qualified beneficiaries: Provided, That an owner-tiller may be the beneficiary of the land he does not own but is actually cultivating to the extent of the difference between area of the land he owns and the award ceiling of three (3) hectares."